Mining the Grand Canyon for Uranium?

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Your help is needed today to protect the Grand Canyon from new uranium mining.

Global energy markets have caused a sharp increase in uranium-mining claims and exploration on public lands near Grand Canyon National Park. New uranium development threatens to degrade wildlife habitat, industrialize otherwise wild and iconic landscapes, and contaminate the water that feeds the Grand Canyon's springs and the Colorado River -- water that means survival to millions of people and to the Grand Canyon's most unique and endangered species.

Yet Congress' attempts to address those threats have gone ignored. In June 2008, the House Committee on Natural Resources invoked a rarely used legal provision to prohibit new mining claims and exploration across 1 million acres of public lands surrounding Grand Canyon National Park for three years. But the Bureau of Land Management has deliberately ignored Congress' order and continues to authorize new uranium exploration within the protected area.

The Grand Canyon deserves better. Please join us in calling on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to enact protections to prevent new uranium claims and exploration around Grand Canyon National Park -- and to require the Bureau of Land Management to conduct rigorous new reviews for old mines to ensure that they adhere to the highest levels of federal environmental compliance.